An Amiable Charlatan | Page 6

don't you?" I ventured.
"Very often indeed," she replied. "You see it is not in the least
entertaining where we are staying and the cooking is abominable. Then
father adores restaurants. Do tell me what you have been talking
about-- you two men--all the evening?"
"The truth!" Mr. Parker remarked, lighting another cigar. "My daughter
knows that I speak nothing else. It is a weakness of mine. Mr.
Walmsley and I were exchanging notes as to our relative professions. I
told him frankly that I was an adventurer and you an adventuress. I
think by now he is beginning to believe it."
She laughed very softly--almost under her breath; yet I fancied there

was a note of mockery in her mirth.
"Confess that you were very much shocked, Mr. Walmsley!" she said.
"Not in the least," I assured her.
She raised her eyebrows ever so slightly.
"Confess, then," she went on, "confess, Mr. Walmsley, that in all your
well-ordered life you have never heard such an admission made by two
apparently respectable people before."
"How do you know," I asked, "that my life has been well-ordered?"
"Look at yourself in the glass," she begged.
Scarcely knowing what I did, I turned round in my seat and obeyed her.
There is, perhaps, a certain preciseness about my appearance as well as
my attire. I am tall enough--well over six feet--but my complexion still
retains traces of my years in Africa and of my fondness for outdoor
sports. My hair is straight and I have never grown beard or mustache. I
felt, somehow, that I represented the things which in an Englishman are
a little derided by young ladies on the other side of the water.
"I can't help my appearance," I said, a little crossly. "I can assure you
that I am not a prig."
"Our young friend," Mr. Parker intervened, "has certainly earned his
immunity from any such title. To tell you the truth, Eve, he has already
been my accomplice this evening in a certain little matter. But for his
help, who knows that I might not have found myself up against it?
Between us we have even had a little fun out of Cullen."
Her expression changed. She seemed, for some reason, none too well
pleased.
"What have you been doing?" she asked me.
"I, personally, have been doing very little indeed," I told her. "Your

father entered the restaurant in a hurry about an hour ago and found it
convenient to seat himself at my table and help himself to my dinner.
He intrusted me, also, with a packet, which I subsequently returned to
him."
"It is now," Mr. Parker declared, replying to his daughter's anxious
glance, "in perfectly safe hands."
She sighed and shook her head at him.
"Daddy," she murmured plaintively, "why will you run such risks?
Even Mr. Cullen isn't an absolute idiot, you know, and there might
have been some one else watching."
Mr. Parker nodded.
"You are quite right, my dear," he admitted. "To tell you the truth,
Cullen was really a little smarter than usual this evening. However,
there's always the luck, you know--our luck! If Mr. Walmsley had
turned out a different sort of man--but, then, I knew he wouldn't."
She turned her head and looked at me. She had a trick of contracting
the corners of her eyes just a little, which was absolutely bewitching.
"Will you tell me why you helped my father in this way, Mr.
Walmsley?"
I returned her regard steadfastly.
"It never occurred to me," I said, "to do anything else--after I had
recognized him."
She smiled a little. My speech was obviously sincere. I think from that
moment she began to realize why I had occupied the little table,
opposite to the one where she so often sat, with such unfailing
regularity.
"What about a music hall?" Mr. Parker suggested. "I hear there's a good
show on right across the street here. Have you any engagement for this

evening, Mr. Walmsley?"
"None at all," I hastened to assure him.
We left the place together a few minutes later and found a vacant box at
the Tivoli. Arrived there, however, Mr. Parker soon became restless.
He kept on seeing friends in the auditorium. We watched him, with his
hat a little on the back of his head, going about shaking hands in
various directions.
"How long have you been in England?" I asked my companion.
"Barely two months," she replied. "Do look at father! Wherever he
goes it's the same. The one recreation of his life is making friends. The
people he is speaking to to-night he has probably come across in a
railroad train or an American bar. He makes lifelong friendships every
time he drinks a cocktail, and he never forgets a face."
"Isn't that a